I currently have a bundle for $52 that includes 250min voice and 7MB of data. I was hoping to upgrade the Bold on July 25th and sign up for the $30 / 6GB data plan however this plan is not applicable for BES. I don’t know how Rogers can justify this… with the new web browser on the Bold I would definitely want to use more data than 7MB.

If Rogers doesn’t change their BB plans I think that iPhone is going to look WAY more attractive than picking up a Bold.

I just got the new 6 gigabyte BlackBerry plan for $30 per month. The $30 per month applies to ALL SMARTPHONES including BLACKBERRY!!!!!!! YAY!

So this means no installing 3rd party applications (browsers, skype, etc) – these kinds of ‘unregistered’ applications incur bandwidth at a seperate, per-kb rate.

So anyone that wants to configure their phone how THEY want to use it (and not how ‘rogers’ wants to you to) will negate any savings that they might have gotten with the bandwidth bundles.

This kind of consumer lock-in is the biggest pile of bs about the whole deal.

http://your.rogers.com/business/wireless/plans_services/business_plans.asp?plan=blackberryvoicenemail&cat=3&typ=2

Mark – don’t forget about text messages. The iphone plans include a batch of SMS text messages in each plan, so you need to add $6 to each of the first two Blackberry plans $10 to the last two Blackberry plans. See Rogers text messaging pricing plans at

http://your.rogers.com/business/wireless/plans_services/essentials/text-messaging.asp

I think you are right in that many of the actual Blackberry users don’t pay the bill and so they don’t complain, but purchasing managers should start to notice and they should complain. Telus offers an unlimited Blackberry plan for $30/month.

Jim – You are right. It’s the Blackberry customers running BES that are getting the least competitive pricing, especially on the bundles. Comparing the $75 bundles, Blackberry gets 7 MB of data compared to 750 MB for iphone.

Roman/Bob – you are correct that Blackberry uses spectrum much more efficiently, but why should us Blackberry users pay more per MB just because we are easier on Rogers’ network? That would be like charging hybrid car owners more per litre of gas compared to SUV owners. Plus, it is the profits from us Blackberry users that have paid for Rogers network and now they are subsidizing costs for Apple and penalizng RIM and (more importantly) the loyal Blackberry customers for running more efficiently on their network. We deserve better or at least equal pricing per MB. Period. We are also the largest segment of paying customers for Rogers data business, so why are we being overcharged? Plus, the new Blackberry browser and newer/faster Blackberry devices make browsing much better and the new Bold will browse even faster than the iphone, so browsing volume on Blackberry will continue to increase. Plus, there are more applications added every day for both business and entertainment and they all consume data.

There is no reasonable argument for charing more per MB, but Rogers probably won’t change until the so-far loyal customers complain loudly or switch to Telus or Bell.

Sure the new Samsung Instinct may not be as trendy but hell for $10 unlimited data from Bell, I’d get one or snag the HTC Touch
- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080704.wrbce04/BNStory/Technology/SIMON+AVERY
- http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/07/06/samsung-bringing-instinct-to-canada/